Plan to hike Ross Valley sewer rates moves forward

Property owners in the Ross Valley Sanitary District will soon receive a letter notifying them that they have until May 15 to object to a five-year schedule of rate increases.

The district board voted 4-1 Wednesday night to proceed with the rate hike process mandated by Proposition 218, which requires property owners be given 45 days to protest increases.

The board decided to proceed with a slightly lower rate increase than recommended by its consultant, John Farnkopf, a partner in HF&H Consultants. The increase proposed by Farnkopf would have raised rates an average of 7 percent per year from fiscal year 2014-15 to fiscal year 2018-19.

The board opted instead for a plan to raise rates about 6 percent per year over the next five years. A more detailed estimate of the proposed increases per ratepayer category was unavailable Thursday due to the board's last-minute decision to scale the rate hike back.

Currently, both single-family residences and multi-family residences in the Ross Valley pay $638 per dwelling unit. Larkspur residents currently pay $864 per dwelling unit, because they do not pay a portion of their charges along with their property taxes, as do all other Ross Valley customers.

Board member Frank Egger, who cast the dissenting vote, thinks the proposed rate hike is still too large.

"There are a number of people on a fixed income here in the Ross Valley," Egger said. "We're not all wealthy. It will be a huge hit for some people."

But board president Mary Sylla said, "We are required by the Regional Water Quality Control Board to come up with a finance plan to do the work that we promised to do and are legally required to do under the cease and desist order that they issued."

In 2012, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered the district to formulate a short-term plan for fixing 45 pipe locations, which are most likely to fail first, a longer-term plan for repairing another 800 locations and a strategy for producing the needed revenue for keeping all 200 miles of the district's pipes in working order.

The board acted after district pipe failures caused several major spills. In 2006, the board slapped the district with a $78,000 fine for spilling 472,600 gallons of untreated waste during heavy rains in December 2005. Then in April 2012, the district agreed to pay the board more than $1.5 million as part of a settlement agreement to atone for releasing more than 3 million gallons of sewage, most of it in two large spills in December 2010.

"We don't have a choice whether to do this work," Sylla said. "We don't even have a choice about what time frame to talk about raising the funds to do the work."

Sylla said that unlike previous rate hikes proposed by the district to fix pipes, this one comes with a detailed plan that prioritizes which sections of pipe need immediate attention. She said if the proposed rate hike is implemented, the Ross Valley Sanitary District's rates will still be lower than those of the San Rafael Sanitation District.

Not all property owners will be affected the same. That is because the board is also moving forward with a recommendation by Farnkopf to alter its rate structure from a flat rate to a "flat rate differential," which will better reflect the differences in wastewater flow produced by residential customers. Under this plan, most single-family residences will pay more than multi-family residences.

Due to another change in the rate structure — an increase in the number of gallons per day in the district's basic unit of wastewater service — commercial customers will end up accounting for a larger share of the district's rate revenue.

Currently, 11 percent of the district's revenue is paid by commercial customers compared to 89 percent from residential customers. The proposed new rates would result in commercial customers paying 15.5 percent versus 84.5 percent for residential customers.

San Anselmo Chamber of Commerce President Connie Rodgers said, "Enough already. Many businesses, especially the small businesses that comprise a lot of Marin County's businesses, are just hanging on. We just can't keep throwing increased costs at them."

As required by Proposition 218, the district will hold a hearing to accept public comments on the proposed increases at 6 p.m. May 15 in the Community Room at the Central Marin Police Authority, 250 Doherty Drive in Larkspur. All signed protests by property owners must be submitted before the end of this hearing.

If a majority of property of owners were to protest the rate hike, it could not go forward. When the district last raised its rates in 2011, it received a total of 4,852 signed protests to the rate increase, representing 31.9 percent of the property owners receiving service.